1501: Why Are People Mean to Me?

Hello everyone and welcome to the first podcast of the 2015 season! What do you think of the snazzy new theme music? I love it! It’s so happy and bouncy! I’ve got myself a new mantra for the year and that is “I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile!” That’s my guiding principle for the year, and the new music is meant to reflect that. So if you like the new tune and it made you smile, send me an email and let me know where in the world you’re listening from! It occurred to me the other day that I have no idea where my podcast listeners are from, and I’d like to know that! I’m in Canada, but where in the world are you and just how far is this little show reaching? 🙂

So, today, for our first show of the year we are going to be answering a question about what it means when people are nasty – why are people mean to me, that’s the question — and we’re going to look at how to cope with it.

Quick announcement: join the club!

Before we get started, though, I just want to make a quick announcement and let you know about a brand-new Facebook group that I launched earlier this week. It’s called the VibeShifters Tribe, it’s a closed group but it is free to join for anyone who’d like to be involved in an interactive discussion group where you can meet and chat with like-minded people from all around the world who think like you do and who are interested in things like mindset, Law of Attraction, and manifesting awesomeness, not just for ourselves but for the whole world. It’s a place to ask questions, get answers, and give and receive support from like-minded dream-builders just like you.

If you like the idea of being a part of this kind of amazing tribe, then please check out VibeShifting.com/vibeshifters, where you can get all the details and sign up to join.

Why are people mean to me?

So, back to today’s topic, which actually comes from a question that was asked in the new VibeShifters group. One of our awesome tribe members asks:

I wonder, as LOA-ers, should we even question why people are nasty to us when all we do is feel good? Should we even ask ourselves why they are behaving the way they do? Like, are they reflecting something to us that we should be aware of, or are they just nasty? If you, Nathalie, or anyone else in this wonderful community could help me understand this, it would be great. If there is nothing really to understand, how can I feel better about it and not get so down when encountering such people on occasion?

Mirror, mirror…

When I first started working with Law of Attraction, one of the main tenets that I came across was this idea of “as within, so without”, and it just resonated so much. It wasn’t something that I had ever thought about or considered before, but once I saw that phrase, something just immediately clicked, and as I started looking at different situations in my life, I realized just how true it was.

Whatever we experience in our physical reality is always a reflection, in some way, of something that is going on within us. That outer world is a mirror to particular habits of thought, belief, or expectation that we have inside… but the tricky part is that these thought habits that we have are not always conscious. They’re usually unconscious – we don’t even realize in most cases that we have them until we make it a deliberate point to look and see where our thoughts are actually centred.

So, when people behave in a way that we don’t like, it’s because there is something in us that expects to encounter that sort of behaviour. And I want to be VERY clear about something here because this is really important: When I say that the outer reality is reflecting the inner reality, this is not, in ANY way, saying that it’s our “fault” when bad or unpleasant things happen — there is no blame in this… it’s just a very impersonal cause and effect scenario, in a way.

Where the expectation of nastiness comes from

I touched on the origins of insecurity and where your expectations of unpleasant behaviour from other people comes from in my post about Stuttering and the Law of Attraction, where I said that these feelings of unworthiness usually start early on in life, and that when we internalize the criticism, whether it’s explicit or implicit, from family or close relations and we start to question our own worthiness – when we start wondering if we’re not good enough, when we start wondering if other people think we’re not good enough – we are unconsciously sending a particular energy signature out there into the Universe.

And it’s that energy signature that we’re putting out there that gets reflected back to us; we start attracting people and situations into our lives that provide us with “evidence” that supports these feelings of not being worthy. We start attracting these nasty encounters into our lives because we expect to.

The downward spiral

And this ends up becoming something of a downward spiral, because if we’re already questioning ourselves it’s hard not to feel even worse when people are mean to us. And it makes us question ourselves, and our feelings of self-worth even more, which just attracts even more of the same type of situation into our lives.

And the reason mean and nasty people make us feel so bad is that when we start to question our own self-worth we’re about as far out of alignment as we can get – we’re as far away from truth as we can possibly get — because we ARE worthy… always, always, always. And when we question that, even just a little bit, it’s distressing on an absolute soul-level – at the very core of who we are.

Co-creations, and where pain comes from

Now, whenever we’re in a situation where other people are involved, it gets a little more complicated because we’re also dealing with the concept of “co-creations”, and co-creations are just situations and experiences that are manifested in co-operation with others (often at the “higher self” level rather than the “conscious self” level).

So when other people are being nasty, there’s the whole area of what’s going on inside of THEM that’s happening, too. I’ve talked about this before in my articles about bullying, but the gist of it is that people who are happy and aligned with Who They Really Are don’t hurt other people — pain only ever comes from pain. So when people are out there inflicting pain on others, it’s because they are in pain, in some way, themselves.

And hurting others is a way of making themselves feel momentarily more powerful, which provides just the tiniest bit of relief from the pain they’re in. (If you’re curious about how that process of “relief” from what we call negative emotions works, there is an article on my website about the Emotional Scale that you can look up, as well.)

(All of these articles that I’m referencing today, by the way – I’ll link them all up in the transcript for this episode on my web site, in case you want to take a look at them.)

Why are they nicer all of a sudden?

OK, so that about answers the question of where all the nastiness we encounter comes from. Now, in her original comment in the group, our tribe member went on to say that the particular situation that she had been dealing with had improved dramatically recently, but she was asking the question because she was still wondering how the situation had come about in the first place, so before we tie it for today, I did just want to address that part of things.

When you notice a change in a situation like this; when you’ve been dealing with a lot of meanness and nastiness and general unpleasantness in your life situation, and then, all of a sudden, there’s just so much less of it going on, this is always a sign that your own energy has shifted. You can’t change other people. Not ever. But when there are changes within yourself, this affects everything around you. It’s all a reflection of what’s happening inside of you.

When people start being nicer, or when they just sort of drift out of your life so you don’t have to deal with them anymore (like a tyrant boss being transferred to another department for instance), this is a sign that you’ve aligned yourself with a new reality. The expectation you had that nastiness was to be expected has changed, therefore the reality around you has to change to reflect that new inner reality.

How to make the mental shift

So now you know that the way to change the situation – to either have people start acting nicer towards you, or to have them move out of your life altogether – is to shift your energy; you need to shift your own beliefs and expectations. But how do you do that?

My recommendation with stuff like this is always to start with the basics. Affirmations and mantras are one of my favourite ways to change the way I look at things. The other thing I highly recommend is that you try looking for evidence that you ARE a great person and that people ARE nice to you.

For example, if the barrista at the coffee shop smiles at you when she hands you your coffee cup, take that as a sign. If the cashier at the grocery stores tells you to have a great day, take that as a sign. And be sure to reciprocate – smile back and wish others a wonderful day, too!

Focus on what you want to see more of in your life, look for examples of kindness during your day, even if you’re not directly a part of the situation (“someone helped that lady get her baby stroller into the bus… that’s nice!”) and try to immerse yourself in good-feeling thoughts and experiences whenever possible. If you like to read, for instance, then make it a point to give yourself the gift of being able to read without interruption for an hour… be nice to yourself, too!

The more you look for kindness and wonderful things in your world, the more of it you’re going to find. That’s just the way it works. And soon enough, all this evidence of people being wonderful is going to sink into your subconscious and your expectations about other people’s behaviours will also shift.